It took over 3 years and almost 300 entries, but I’ve finally cracked the final untouched category of Simply Delicious–the very last one, Group 20: Basic Recipes. These are part of the Cooking School segment in the back of the book, teaching you basic techniques, ingredients, and recipes that you’ll need to be an experienced cook. This recipe, 20-13: Béarnaise and Hollandaise Sauces covers the basics of butter sauces, which you can expand upon with 20-15: Vary the Butter Sauces.

Hollandaise is one of the five mother sauces, a big part of French cuisine. Mastering it (and the others) is one of the marks of an accomplished and talented chef. I’ve been cooking for a long time and I’m still working on mastering this one.

As evidenced by my notes on the card, I’ve had some trouble with butter sauces before. I was making 8-33: Black and White Filet Mignons as part of my 4-6-09 dinner and wanted to make fresh béarnaise sauce instead of using frozen…I remember that not working out well. In fact, that whole dish was super overwhelming–I haven’t made it for this project yet, but it should be interesting when I do.

Here’s the basics of what goes into their version of Hollandaise sauce–there are variations depending on whose recipe you’re using.

Here’s a glimpse of a non-broken Hollandaise sauce–this was from when I made 5-4: Eggs Benedict for Mother’s Day brunch (MD2017). It broke shortly after this (read that entry for more information on that), but at least I was able to capture it, however briefly it lasted.